Yeah, I couldn't agree with Emil more! If someone doesn't like the way Jens says or does things fine! But don't try to take down the site that most people enjoy or have enjoyed! Think you can do it better? Fine; prove it! Just don't try to do it by using this very site to steal it's user base! If I were Jens; I wouldn't hesitate one second to delete accounts of users tying to do that and they're posts! If someone can get more attention,, make more money,, rank higher than Ondra or simply just be associated with a different site that they prefer fine! Live your life; go there! But any competing site should build itself and its user base through good content, a fun interface and value of it's own!! Not by stealing what Jens spent so much time and work to build! Not to mention all the users who've contributed and who's input has made for the real "added value"!
I checked 27crags as well but I think 8a is way better. For sure they have some good features as well, for instance, that you can log a given grade and a proposed grade, but still I stay here. Other sites more or less copy 8a, they dont have the pioneer status, so better stay with the original.
When 27crags started they asked their members to copy over the data also saying something like, "Let us keep this copying a secret". We have been informed that this is illegal and we told them that this and they took it away. Of course any member can copy the data and do whatever he/she wants with it but when a company actually make a program to get the data in their data base it is of course not OK. Edit: I have taken away the paragraph Sidney is taking about below as the main point I wanted to address was just that these both websites have organized a copy feature into their data base.
> Both websites have some good features but it is hard for me to understand why we should split the > data...this the climbing community will not gain from. If this continues we might have 10 websites > like this stealing the data from each other and I do not see anything positive from this. that seems to me to be quite a monolithic/monotheistic concept.. i am not saying anything about copying or splitting data here, i am referring to the concept of "spread of information" for example, you say that grade inflation is being fought thanks to superstar climbers who travel here and there but also thanks to your website who spreads the information about acents and allows the comparison among them.. so why having several websites doing the same stuff is wrong (I strongly believe there were already other websites out there dealing with ascents before the birth 8a..)? who says that the evolution of grades will be exactly the same here and there? and if it is different, who says that you hold the truth? that would put you in the same position that topos have with respect to your perspective, don't you think? we dont need these religious fights! or.. do we? edit: i have adjusted the layout a bit..
To be honest the main advantage of 8a is the huge community (database)
due to the first come first safe effect and the world wide approach. But 8a
does not adapt the current state of the art for websites / services and
it only develops in minimal steps. I use 8a for my personal scorecard
because I am interested in the opinion of other climbers for
routes/crags. Unfortunately the usability and "look and feel" are old-school
and in some points are very complicated. For example:
date popup,
adding a picture to a crag,
give comments to a crag (no way), almost no editorial information for crags,
dealing with small local crags,
no full text search, frame navigation, no query expansion, no suggestions (spots nearby ...),
slow servers or low performance of code/frameworks,
no import/export, ...
Adding ILike buttons and posting the new web usage record every week is
not enough to compete with other platforms. Yes, I know - it is a very
hard job being a web master but why not change the development to an open
source project? I guess this would be an extreme boost for this
webservice and for the climbing community.
I agree. 8a benefits from a large community and a large database. But it needs to develope and become more of a web 2.0 type of site. take a hint from sites like www.fitocracy.com lets us fistbump each other for our climbs. give more space on the main page for average joe climbers who just climbed their first 7a (or 8a). its not all about chris sharma or adam ondra :)
I find it quite embarassing that other websites have pretty much ripped off 8a's concept. They should have rather volunteered to help 8a be a better place. Whenever there is a service with some type of database (websites to look for a house, a job, second hand tickets etc), it is always better to have one single place. It's an economics concept called network externalities.
@Franz I find it totally the opposite. I bet people have tried to give 8a.nu advice in the past and nothing has happened, and yeah 27 Crags has a ticklist, but what else have they ripped off??? The online topo they are making is so much better, 8a has the name of the problems/routes and a grade, but they don't have photos of the individual rocks etc. You say it would be good just to have one single place. Do you think the same when it comes to restaurants, newspapers, TV stations etc. In my opinion there has to be more then one, so the so called "market" isn't being ruled by just one individual. edit: And one more thing, have you noticed that 27 crags or Sendage have posted any negative things about how 8a handles their business. They seem to be quite happy on what they are doing and rather then picking on others they try to make their services better. When I look what has happened in the climbing world, I check all of them like: Climbingnarc, UKC 8a.nu 27Crags and many more...
You haven't understood the type of services I am talking about. In certain types of businesses, having many competitors breaks down the market and requires the consumer to multiply its efforts to cover it all. Restaurants and TV stations are clearly not the case. Your surname sounds Nordic. Don't you agree that having a significantly dominant website like Blokket in Sweden or Finn in Norway when it comes to look for a house/a used guitar/a job/whatever makes it all so much easier? Same thing would be for climbing databases. And what do you mean exactly when you say "I bet people tried to give advice in the past and nothing has happened"? did they advise the webmasters to do, more better work? Wouldn't it be better if those people offered to do the work themselves? I don't want to sound boastful, but I've always thought that grammar and spelling on 8a's homepage are quite appalling (I'm not a native English speaker myself either). But rather than just complaining about it, at the first occasion, I have offered my help to Lars and he accepted. I am now happily fixing text as much as I can. How many people complaining about this or that element of 8a have actually manned up and offered help? Let's not forget it's a free service...
Yeah you might be right, but I don't see 8a doing the same type of guide service as 27 crags in the near future. So basically they are offering different services. People seem to like both of them, so I guess its up to us, the public to use whatever we see to be good. It would be awesome if all the websites would be intergrated, but I guess the biggest problem with that is: you think the people who run these websites see eye to eye.
27crags.com or sendage.com?